CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
GIRLS, WIVES, AND MOTHERS.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
THE CLIFF-HOUSES OF CAÑON DE CHELLY.
TWO DAYS IN A LIFETIME.
THE COLOUR-SENSE.
‘SO UNREASONABLE OF STEP-MOTHER!’
FRENCH DETECTIVES.
‘NOT LOST, BUT GONE BEFORE.’
No. 3.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1884.
GIRLS, WIVES, AND MOTHERS.
A WORD TO THE MIDDLE CLASSES.
There may be theoretically much to sympathisewith in the cry for the yet higher culture of thewomen of our middle classes, but at the sametime not a little to find fault with in practice.While it is difficult to believe that there canbe such a thing as over-education of the humansubject, male or female, there may yet be falselines of training, which lead to a dainty misplacedrefinement, quite incompatible with the socialposition the woman may be called to fill in after-life,and which too often presupposes, what eveneducation has a difficulty in supplying—a subsistencein life. Where we equip, we too frequentlyimpede. In the hurry to be intelligentand accomplished, the glitter of drawing-roomgraces is an object of greater desire than the morehomely but not less estimable virtues identifiedwith the kitchen. Our young housewives areimbued with far too much of the æsthete at theexpense of the cook; too much of the stage, andtoo little of the home. In abandoning the equallymistaken views of our grandfathers on women’sup-bringing, we have gone to the opposite extreme,to the exclusion of anything like a means toan end; and in the blindest disregard of therecipients’ circumstances in life, present and prospective.
In considering what the aim of female educationought to be, it is surely not too much to expectthat of all things it should mentally and physicallyfit our women for the battle of life. Itsapplication and utility should not have to endwhere they practically do at present—at the altar.While it is necessary to provide a common armourfor purposes of general defence, there certainlyought to be a special strengthening of the harnesswhere most blows are to be anticipated; and ifnot to all, certainly to middle-class women, theyears of battle come after, not before marriage.Every one of them, then, ought to be trained inconformity with the supreme law of her being,to prove a real helpmate to the man that takes